Eh, replacing Riddle?
by Peon01
Summary: I wake up in the Chamber of Secrets, right beside Ginny Weasley and a suspicious black book. Who am I? Some random schmuck that replaced Riddle. This is going to be one of those ridicilous 'self-inserts' that pop up now and then.
1. Part 1, Plotting

I open up my eyes with a start, a heavy frown decorating my face. This isn't my bedroom, and I've never had the habit of sleepwalking. What more... I feel strange. As if I'm not here, nor there, but somewhere inbetween. It's a very unsettling feeling, bordering on a nightmare to be honest.

Huh... A lucid dream? That's nice, I guess. Never really had too many of them. Rubbing my forehead in thought, I soon find myself glancing about and studying my immediate surroundings. I can only wince in realization - my subconscious minds seems to have created a simulacrum of the Chamber of Secrets. What with the dinky cave, intimidating murals of snakes and the humongous statues scattered to and fro. It's all very impressive when all's said and done, if you disregard the perpetuating stench of mold and decaying animal carcasses.

I wrinkled my nose in distaste; neither the movie nor the book had mentioned anything of this. Just a few hours previous I had finished watching this very scene, where Tom Riddle gloated and Potter got lucky. For once... For once I'd really like it if the villain won!

Just think about it! What's honestly going to happen in a few years in the Potterverse? Muggles are going to discover and murder them. That's what I'd do, were I a mundane man schmoozing through life. If somehow, out of nowhere, a secret magical culture of thousands were revealed... I'd eat their god-damn souls. Anything for some of that juice of theirs. If that wasn't possible? Well... If I can't have it, no-one can! Gyuhuhuhuu!

Coughing once into my fist, I glanced down at Ginny Weasley, whom was fast asleep. She was a pretty little thing, cute to boot. Nothing like in the movie, where there was plenty of babyfat rounding off her face. No, here she was unnaturally gaunt, with an unhealthy shade of white plastered across her face. Ugh, upon closer inspection she looked starved. Well... Not my problem! If she was older and ate some more, I might've just have kept her in my pocket as a pet. Cast a few reducios and apply some illegal transfiguration to her back, and I'd have my own pixie. Like Tinkerbell. Not those blue, juvenile monstrosities Lockhart introduced earlier in the year.

Why do I believe transfiguring someone permanently without their consent to be illegal? Besides the obvious, that is. Eh, it's a dream with dream rules. I might as well have some fun in this... Incredibly realistic dream of mine. Like, I've had a few lucid dreams in my time, but they were nothing like this. Neither was I prone to random hallucinations.

I glanced down at my hands, eyeing their blurry and transparent outline. I waved them around, they responded. Gosh, I could see through my own hands! So cool! Pinching myself, I felt a phantom pain of sort. That, huh... Well, I'm not sure how to respond to that. So I repeated the action and got the same response; a distant twinge of pain, as if I weren't quite real. A phantom pain.

How... _Interesting.  
_  
Now, I'd like to imagine myself as a pretty genre savvy guy, and not a total moron. So I'm going to take a leap of faith and do something utterly ridiculous. I'm going to say that this is real, and that I've taken over the role of villain in this grand story known as the 'Potter Saga' - something I'm more than keen to do.

Hooh! I'm all giddy! Who would've thought? Me, a grand overlord of despair and darkness!? It's like a dream come true, baby! I've even got butterflies in my stomach! Kukukuku! One tyrannical villain coming right up, world!

The kicker is that I'm going to be competent. Like, be the best monstrous overlord I can be - all fringe horror and stuff, but end up doing a good job. So after my Empire has been established and been in the running for fifty years or so, I'll have a plucky group of heroic adventurers 'vanquish' me. I'm sure that'd work. I take over the world, give it half a century to stabilize as a world-spanning magical government answering only to me and many, many children. (I'm going to aim for a harem).

Or none of that. It sounds like... It sounds like a lot of work, to be honest. And dangerous to boot. But I can handle danger, can't I? I'm in the form of Tom Marvolo Riddle, Dark Lord Supreme! So just swishing my wand ought to solve plenty of issues that's going to crop up. I grimace at the thought; do I actually _know_ any magic?

Nope, I don't. It's all empty. I spent about a minute or so racking my mind for any magic I might have, but all I have is info from the books, movies and heaplods of fanfiction.

Fanfiction... I've got to assume that Dumbledore is evil. And manipulative. And Harry has been beaten and abused and everyone is out to get me. Shit. That's... That's really bad. Holy christ, I might end up having to save everyone from the Headmaster's wicked schemes!

What will I have to do? First things first; play it smart. Harry is going to come storming through those elaborately snake-engraved doors any minute now, and that's when his powers of fate and prophecy will begin to function. That underachiver got more luck in his pinky than I'll ever have in ten lifetimes. So... So what? I'll pretend to be a memory, as the original Riddle presented himself as originally. Yeah, that'll work. Like a painting. An OWL project in charms. That sounds reasonable.

Ginny? The Chamber is eating her magic, yeah. That makes sense. But where do I go from there?

I spent the next ten minutes or so plotting out my next course of action. During that time I accepted that this was real, because my new body started to ground itself in the material plane, disregarding its previous ghostly state of in-between. The gross scents of the chamber intensified, the sense of touch escalated and I ended up being able to actually move the black notebook, whereas my first attempts ended with my hands gliding through it. I did the smart thing and hid it behind a pillar in one of the far corners of the room. Couldn't have Harry get any ideas. Then I pilfered Ginny for her wand, hiding the stick of wood up my sleeve. At this point in time my pinches had begun to hurt more than they had previously, but there was still the faint traces of... Being hollow. As if I was missing something cruical that was slowly being filled in by some relatively scarce source. I theorized that this was the girl's soul, that I was more or less _eating._

It was a scary thought, one which I furtively ignored. I couldn't think of the _consequences_ right now. I had to look at my immediate future, yeah. Like some sort of game; If I lose? Then I'll start over, maybe get reborn in a proper manner. If I lose? Eh, it'll just be another grand adventure for me, just somewhere else. As it was I felt that I was teetering on the edge of a chasm, a dark void. Would I really be alright if I failed? I... Was it fair of me to let this random girl of eleven die so I could live?

Hell yes it was! Useless Ginny! I'll change the world, what will she do? Become a broodmare for Potter, that's what! I'm going to get resurrected, deal with the Potter boy, cast a spell or two with Ginny's wand and then continue my plan for world domination! I'll just disregard any thoughts of guilt, fright and self-hatred 'till this scene was over and done!

The thing is, in my younger days I performed at a theater and even went up to the stage at times, performing my act for a few hundred people at most. It was loads of fun, and the experience would lend itself well here. So I'd act out my part as a memory, stall Harry for some time, answering a few questions and ultimately advising him on what to do. Call Dumbledore for help. No villain wouuld do such a thing, aye? I might even chide him from bringing the obviously incompetent Lockhart down into the chamber, mentioning this 'delay' might be what ends up killing Ginny, cause she didn't get help in time.

Gyuhuhuhu!

Alright, alright... Better hide myself behind a pillar and 'mysteriously' appear when he starts crying for help, like some little bitch. Were I him I'd already learned how to transfigure air into highly volatile explosions. That way I would always have the "blow shit up!" option whenever stuff went pear-shaped. Useless Harry, only having some sort of importance to the plot cause he got a piece of ol' Voldy stuck in his skull.

Do I have Riddle still accompanying me?

I must have. I can't take the chance and say 'no' - I've read enough self-insert fanfics to know better. Man, that must suck! Some random joe snatches fifty years of hard work from right under your nose, with no forewarning whatsoever. I better try to, uh... Eat his soul or something later on. Maybe subsume/integrate it within myself and gain all of Riddle's magical knowledge for me own, without his megalomaniac tendencies. That'd be nice.

I spent the next thirty minutes or so trying to get into 'contact' with my own soul, magic and whatever mystic energies existed in this world - to little success. All I could feel, with an alarming clarity at that, was how far I was off to experience a 'true body', so to say. There was an intense connection between me and Ginny Weasley, one whom I didn't dare touch. The girl was going to die soon, and that was that.

So when a thunderous boom echoed through the chamber, and obnoxious cries of "it's open, charge!", "death to the basilisk" and "wow, it's even more impressive than I remember!" I was obviously surprised. Startled, even. This wasn't how I had imagined it going; I'd planned out a whole timeline and shit. Gazing out from behind the corner I was hiding, I was met by the startling gaze of three tiny figures rushing through the Chamber's walkway, all decked out in medieval armor. Which were glowing. With magic. Runic script at that, when I studied them further - I had plenty of time; the path from one side of the Chamber to another took a minute or so to cross.

I couldn't help but sigh in resignation when the three of them arrived beside Ginny's body, huffing and puffing as if they'd run a maraton. It was the Golden Trio, decked out with what could only be runic armor and somesort of unwieldy two-handed claymore of ridicilous proportions. Like, anime-style bullshit that the guy Cloud from Final Fantasy wields. It was called a Buster Sword, I think.

"So, Ron, your sister still alive? And do any of you see the Diary? Wasn't she supposed to keep it close to her chest in the movie?" One of the figures said; I recognized the voice as Harry Potter's.

That's when I hid behind my pillar and really started sweating. Damn, oh damn, oh no no noooo... At least of one of those bastards was a self-insert like me, and that kind of ruined any kind of plan I had. Neither was I gonna take a chance with these bastards and talk it out - I didn't want to die. They had the impression of the self-righteous sort.

"Nope, no Diary and Ginny's pulse is barely there... She's deathly cold as well, damn. I'd really hate to lose another sibling, guys; Percy was bad enough as it is." That ought to be Ron, he sounded... Resigned, as if he had expected something like this.

"My occlumency is quite advanced", I heard Hermoine continue, and I grimaced in response. "So my memory is perfect, and we've all seen the movies, so something must have changed. Darn. Ron, Harry, go and smite Riddle, he's no doubt lurking around. We kill the spectre and the connection should get broken."

I was utterly fucked. They were all self-inserts in in some kind of retarded fanfic universe where the 'main characters' breaks all rules of established magic. That armour was proof enough; hell, this world was about Wizards and Witches, not Mage Knights! Motherfuckers!

I had to get away. I had to... I just had to run. I don't want to die, oh god... Mommy...


	2. Part 2, Unexpected Allies

They were searching for me, slowly but surely gaining ground. I'd calmed down in the meantime, sequestered as I was in the water, right beside one of those gigantic monoliths of snakes. It'd been a wise choice, all things considered. I'd even hidden away the Diary in one of the folds of my robes. Whenever one of them approaches I simply went underwater, careful to make as little ripples as possible.

Still, it was obvious that they'd find me soon enough, and then carve me up like some kind of animal. I... I couldn't let that happen. I just couldn't! I had a plan! I was going to become the Master of Death, gather the Hallows, create a harem, rob Fort Knox for all its gold and tame a dragon to ride! I wouldn't let these bastards ruin everything I've worked so hard for!

Well, it was actually about twenty minutes of planning, which included discarding ridicilous ideas like "create a spell that impregnates random girls", "create a horcrux of my own!", "Leap into the Veil of Death!" ... Actually, that last one might be viable, can't discard it with all of these new revelations. I'd ultimately judged this Potterverse as a shitty AU divergence of some sort. That meant the 'Veil of Death' was an interdimensional portal to other worlds and timeturners could allow me to leap hundreds of years back into the past if I 'broke them' the right way. Ugh.

"Hey Hermoine," I heard Ron call, his voice frayed with nerves; guess he was worried about his sister, "Can you do that Homun Revelio spell or whatever it's called? The one that reveals the presence of humans?"

It's called 'Homenum Revelio', I wanted to scold, but chose not to. It was a pretty good question, all things considered. So I drifted a bit closer to the walkway, peering upwards from the water's surface.

"Sorry Ron, but that's way beyond me; we don't learn that until sixth or seventh year." The little trollop responded, her voice tinged with irritation. I couldn't help but smirk in response.

"Hey guys, I think I've figured it out!" Harry waved at Ron and they soon joined up with Hermoine, speaking furiously as the boy-who-lived revealed his discovery.

"The thing is; all the dust and grime here? It's been disturbed; there's track's everywhere. So I started to follow them around, and what a surprise; guess what I found?" He sounded uncharitably smug as he spoke, a small smile playing at his lips. It was disgustingly easy to see, what with his armor shining so brilliantly, more or less lighting up his whole face. None of the trio were wielding helmets, so if I was lucky I might... I might bash their skulls in. Yeah. I'd do that. if I got the chance.

"No, what?" This was Hermoine, a frown marring her childish face. "Let me guess; he's already left, already been resurrected? But Ginny's still alive..." She trailed off and began to pout, and a blossom of hope began to spread inside of my chest.

I could clearly see their expression and hear their voices, but I was still slightly worried. I was just... Too close. If I were lucky they'd leave with the body of Ginny, but I wasn't taking any chances. I had to figure out some plan, and soon at that.

"No, not at all. By one of the statues over there," he pointed to where I'd first hidden my Diary, "had the outline of a small rectangular block. As if someone had recently tried to hide away a book of somesort." The other two immediately tensed, glancing around is sudden paranoia. Hermoine's eyes even shifted over where I was partially submerged by darkness and hidden from sight. She didn't notice me. Good thing to; I'd hate to be decapitated by those humonguous, incredibly sharp swords of theirs.

"Shit. That means he knew we were coming... And is still here, most likely. Watching us. Studying us. We can't take any chances. Can you try to call on the basilisk, Harry?" This was Ron; he'd knelt down beside his sister and that expression of his... Seeing it on a child of twelve was disturbing. The tightening of his jaw, intensity of his eyes; this guy was dangerous. "We need to destroy the Tiara and Locket as quickly as possible, before the whatever trap that's waiting is sprung. What more, the stasis seals on the roosters are temporary. They weren't supposed to last more than an hour."

That's when Hermoine placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "Don't worry Ron, we'll get him, save your sister and take care of the horcruxes. Just like we dealt with Harry's scar, yeah?" There was a tone of comraderie enveloping the three of them, and I couldn't help but look away. These guys were... They were tight. Friends, family. They'd gone through a lot of shit together. A pang of jealousy shot through me at that thought. Why did I have to be the villain? Yeah... Why couldn't I be the Hero? The Savior?

An idea slowly began to crystallize itself through my mind at that idea. Yeah, why shouldn't I save the day? I, Tom Marvolo Riddle, Sorceror Supreme!? Gyuhuhuhuhuu~!

"We wont lose anyone else", Harry said, his voice firm. "Percy's sacrifice wont be in vain. I might have lost the ability to speak parseltongue without the scar, we might not trust Dumbledore, but we came prepared for this. We'll be able to lure it out easily enough! We'll just open up the mokeskin pouches and empty it all out! Everything! We raided the kitchen for this, remember!"

And so they did. It was a perfect lure, I realized. Meat, blood, recently slaughtered cattle and loads of other goodness. All of it just... Fell through three tiny pouches. Even a live sheep! It was ridicilous! Holy shit, this universe had Supertrunks! God-damn! I... I needed some 'o dat'!

But that also meant I had to act, and soon. I had no doubt that the basilisk would salivate for such a great and bountiful harvest of foodstuffs, so I had no choice. With a grimace I began to swim to the surface of the water, determination taking ahold of me. It was now or never.

The thing is, I'm genre savvy. These guys? They're ordinary folks, not like me. They'd read the books, watched the films... But that was it. Just ordinary self-inserts. I was different. I was genre savvy, I knew how to play the game now that the narrative rules had been revealed to me. These bastards had Power Armor, Supertrunks and the ability to freeze shit in time. What more, Potter had gotten a piece of me killed! That was a part of my soul! Just, god-damn! So now it was time to change _everything._

"Dumbledore is the greatest wizard alive!" I yelled, my soaked form dripping water onto the cobblestones beneath my feet. I must have looked ridicilous where I stood, tall and proud, spouting what ought to be anathema to Tom Riddle. But I believed it. I truly did, for I had immersed myself into a singular role; the Headmaster's blind follower and a supporter of the Light!

They just gaped at me, and I could distinctly hear a muttered "What the flying fuck?"

"No matter what you do, no matter what evil you conduct, I wont let this foul ritual continue!" I continued, taking a daring step forwards, my hand rising towards the heavens. "I'll save Ginny! I'll save the basilisk! I'll save the motherfucking world!" I was screaming atop of my lungs now, my face twisted into one of fervent _belief._

"This doesn't make any sense!" Potter replied, his pre-pubescent form marred with obvious disbelief and confusion. "This isn't how it happens!"

"So long as people believe in Dumbledore, there is still hope! So long as people have him in his hearts_, _Hogwarts will always be his home!" I ranted on, knowing within my heart of hearts that this was it. It was now or never, and as expected, Ron delivered.

"Whatever the fuck's going on, I don't give a shit. You're going to die so my sister will live!" With that, Ron raised his gigantic sword above his head and begun to run towards me whilst screaming atop of his head. It was ludicrous; he was basically shitting in the face of common sense and all that was _right and proper. _His tiny arms couldn't possible lift that slab of metal so high, but he obviously did. Fucking magic.

"No, wait Ron! It's a trap!"

But it was too late; he was already off, and Harry and Hermoine had no choice but to reluctantly follow_, _but Ron was simply _too quick._ Unnaturally fast, and was quickly gaining ground on his friends. His armor had quite a few abilities, it seemed.

I did the only thing I could - I drew my stolen wand with a flourish and grinned. "Dumbledore will lend aid to those in need! So long as students have faith they will always be safe! Stupefy! Arresto Momentum! Petrificus Totalis! Stupefy! Stupefy! Stupefy!"

Flares of light erupted from my stick, a crescendo of colors that soared towards my approaching enemy. It was a frightening display of instinctual knowledge; I knew none of these spell, but they were _ingrained_ within me. I simply had to believe. Yet, it was to no avail; Ron simply batted them aside with his sword or raised a runed gauntlet to soak up my admittingly pathetic magic. Still, he came to a stop, letting the others approach him, his expression grim. There was about twenty meters seperating us now, and I couldn't help but grin in response. I could do magic!

"That's impossible!", Hermoine exclaimed, the beginnings of panic taking ahold of her features. "Riddle can't do advanced magic unless Ginny is dead, and she's obviously still breathing! My earlier spell still haven't collapsed!"

"You!", Harry said, pointing at me as Ron took a defensive stance in front of his friends. "What the fuck is going on?"

I simply smirked smugly in response. "I'm stopping your evil and doing my best to save the school... Really, Harry, blustering in here, talking about how you're going to carve me up... It was really scary, you know. Villanous, even." Just then there was a flash of fire, the flap of wings and a beautiful cry as Fawkes landed on my shoulder, the Sorting Hat gripped in its claw.

"So long as you believe in Dumbledore, aid shall be given." I state as I draw the Sword of Gryffindor from the battered hat_, _a wide grin etched into my features. "Evil shall be vanquished, love will conquer all and friendship will prevail above anything else!" With that declaration I put the sorting hat atop of my head.

"Oh, uh, what? What the fuck? Another one? Really? This is absolutely crazy, but I like it! Go ahead, I'll lend you my powers!" _  
_


End file.
